America's conservatives are running high on ideas but low on political talent

The Republican Party should manage its high profile candidates a little better

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference, which is taking place in Washington this week, exposes the odd duality of American conservatism. On the one hand, the movement is winning the battle of ideas. All the intellectual energy is on the Right. There are the great think tanks (CATO, Heritage, AEI) and the great journals (National Review, The American Conservative, Commentary). The movement is incredibly literate – even wonky. Consider the titles of these panels: “Data Mining and Common Core Standards: Big Brother is Taking Over Your Children’s Upbringing”, “Is Fusionist Conservatism Still Possible?”, “Digital Liberty: Tying Government’s Hands on Tech, Telecom, and the Web.” Nothing the Left is doing comes close to this attention to detail. The Right – institutionally speaking – is a whole lot smarter.

Yet the politicians that the Republican Party throws up rarely match the intellectual standard of its base. On the first day of CPAC, the set piece speeches were by Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain. None of them exactly rewrote the Gettysburg Address.

Michele Bachmann (who, let us never forget, once expressed her admiration for a dead gay serial killer) sweetly made light of her misfortunes. “Running for president of the United States,” she said, “is really one series of humiliations after another.” Herman Cain’s self-parody was less self-conscious. I watched it in the press room and the kids were placing bets on how long it took him to mention his “9-9-9 tax plan.” He held off for a good ten minutes, but then it came back up like a poisoned plate of grits. Herman told us, earnestly, that God must have had a hand in the writing of that plan because his granddaughter was born in 1999 – a year that bears its digits. “I looked into her eyes,” he said, “and my first thought was ‘I wanna do something to help my country.’” Really? This man’s first thought when seeing his newborn daughter was “I’m gonna run for President some day?” If that’s a lie, it’s shameless. If it’s true, it’s disturbing.

What the pols lack in brains they make up for with raw emotion. Crowds are a very unconservative thing – they eschew reason and order. CPAC whips them up with angry, silly speeches. Obama is a communist, the Environmental Protection Agency is destroying America, every five minutes Barney Frank kills another job ("Did you know that he's gay?"), INVADE SYRIA NOW, NOW, NOW! It climaxed on Thursday with a stand up routine by Brad Stine called “Political correctness and the Wussification of America.” Five minutes of his act was why we should tear airbags out of cars. Apparently they’ve taken all the drama out of driving. This assault on our right to plunge through a windscreen at 100 miles per hour was not the only batty idea I heard. In a cab ride to a nightclub, someone tried to convince me that we should privatise the fire service. How would it work? “You’d call the fire guys and they’d turn up and quote you a price.”

The problem is that the Republican Party doesn’t groom candidates – they emerge from state politics. On the one hand, that means the GOP is full of people who are in touch with ordinary folks and a stark contrast to the Harvard educated snobs who populate the Dems. On the other hand, there’s a lack of a certain polish and professionalism. An obvious exception is Marco Rubio, who delivered the best and most moving speech of the day. But Rubio made it to the Senate without being scouted and groomed by the Republican leadership.

More troubling is that the gulf between the quality of the Right’s ideas and the quality of its people is combined with intellectual myopia – a refusal even to acknowledge other points of view. I stumbled upon one sad example.

Strolling down a hotel corridor, I found Fred Karger sitting alone on top of a desk. Mr Karger is a candidate for President but you probably won’t have heard of him. His problem isn’t a lack of money or talent – he’s been ignored by the national GOP because he’s gay. He's currently filing a complaint that claims CPAC denied him a booth from which to distribute literature because of his sexuality. He was upbeat and bright – very charming, too – but he looked a little hurt.

I’m a Roman Catholic and I don’t agree with Fred Karger on much. But I stopped and said hello, and shook his hand. Arguing with Karger is one thing, but to ignore the man and pretend that he doesn’t exist is far crueler. It strips him of his personhood and his dignity. There’s a booth at CPAC advertising a Tea Party board game and distributing free cake. The idea that Fred Karger can’t have a little table and hand out leaflets is laughable.

Is a party that is big enough for Bachmann, Perry and Cain not big enough for Karger? It ought to be. Conservatives are smart enough to defeat him on the battlefield of intellectual debate: they don’t need to treat him so shabbily. When I cast my vote in tomorrow’s straw poll – the acid test for which presidential candidate the conservative movement favours – I shall put a big line through everyone’s name and scrawl FRED KARGER along the bottom.